When, after much time away, Kristina is back in Berkshire County, word spreads fast that she and her ex-husband are caring for their estranged, ailing daughter Julie. Broken-hearted and giddy with love and confusion, surprising visitors from Julie’s complicated past practically trip over each other to reach the young woman they thought they’d lost years before. Hamish Linklater’s The Whirligig spins a tale of a fractured community weaving a circuitous route back to one another. ​

From drunken fools to mistaken identities, there’s something Shakespearean about Hamish Linklater’s new play, The Whirligig, presented by the New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center. In it, the past comes flooding back to a small town in Berkshire County when Kristina (Dolly Wells) moves back in with her ex-husband Michael (Norbert Leo Butz) to help him care for their estranged daughter Julie (Grace Van Patten). The 23-year-old is dying from an illness long undiagnosed due to years spent as a heroin addict. Confined to a hospital bed, she’s been told by doctors that her case is hopeless and sent to her childhood home to live out the rest of her waning days. As word spreads about Julie’s condition, old friends and lovers make their way to her bedside as they struggle with the most Shakespearean dilemma of all: Are our lives pre-destined or do we control our own fate? We witness them struggle to confront Julie’s death while she is still alive, facing the demons in their past and asking themselves what role they played in her death and what — if anything — they could have done differently. As a whole, The Whirligig is a superabundant work: emotions are big; the narrative is …Read more